Thursday, September 24, 2009

CUTTING EDGE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES BECOME SCIENCE FACT

Okay, I admit it. I am an undercover geek. I love science, and it’s one of the reasons I love writing science fiction. Here are the nerdy facts about myself: I am in the IT field, heck I even teach IT courses occasionally, I write young adult science fiction novels for fun, and I read science journals for fun. Ooops! I’ve been exposed.

It amazes me when I read scientific journals of the leaps and bounds made in technology. One of the teasers I torment my students with is that most techie types that go into the IT field do so with dreams of grandeur. They want to build the next cutting edge technology or other. I personally wanted to go into Artificial Intelligence. However, I never seemed lucky enough to land a job where I actually was involved in a great science challenge like that. In most cases, newbie engineers realize that creating technology of any kind is actually rather boring. It consists of a lot of research, writing, planning, writing, research (oh, am I repeating – well that’s what it requires) before you ever start to create anything useful. So, what did I do? I started to write books about the gadgets and widgets that I had hoped one day to create.

SCIENTIFIC FACT THAT WAS ONCE FICTION

Prosthetics: Did you know that sciencetist have created prototype prosthetics that can actually FEEL?! They can also pick up something as small as a grape? Well, let’s kick it up a notch, and say that the user can control the prosthetic by brain waves. There are current technological advances that prove that this is possible.

Human thoughts can control technology: Did you know that technology exist, that allow human subjects to speak mentally (using brain waves) to computers? Amazing!

Animated Holograms: Did you know that an interactive ecosystem has been made, that allows children to create trees or other objects with their body. Also this technology was utilized to create a giant sea monster in the Tokyo Bay to promote the film, “The Water Horse.” These are forms of Heliodisplay technology that projects video onto the thin air.

Cloning: Let’s not forget this! Currently scientist are working on perfecting the cloning of human embryos for study of stem cells which could lead to curing infertility problems of hosts, and curing other known diseases.

The list goes on and on. Soon as a science fiction writer I will have to push myself further and further to come up with new ideas that can shape the minds of young scientist of the future.